First Post

[Irish Jigger]

Hi everyone, greetings from the Emerald Isle. This is indeed a great site with so much information and advice available. Recently I had a problem  upgrading a Penn 112H from 4:1 to 5:1 gearing and emailed Alan who helped me solve the problem immediately,thank's Alan.

[realmedic]

irish welcome glad to know alan helped you out as he has alot of knowledge of reels. i myself an still trying to catch up   

[nook55]

Hello Irish Jigger,

You will definately get some great info and good ideas here. I know I have!

So, what type of fish do you normally target in Ireland?

[Irish Jigger]

Hi nook55,
             The fish here are mostly cold water species such as cod,haddock,ling pollack (Pollachius pollachius),and coalfish (Pollachius virens). They are great table fish with the exception of the coalfish which has a greyish flesh and is OK when smoked.  They are fished in depths of 60/300 feet using 20/30 lb class tackle with fish baits being the preferred method. Most of these  fish inhabit shipwrecks and fall to Yo-Yo style jigging which is popular over here and fairly similar to the style of fishing practiced off your New England coast.  In Summer the pollack and Coalfish are caught on reefs in much shallower water using light spinning gear with leadheads and plastics and around this time we target Tope which is a small shark weighing 25/50 lbs and considered to be a great sporting fish.The Tope are all released as they are considered an endangered species due to commercial overfishing for shark meat and fins.

There was a Giant Bluefin sports fishery off the NW coastline in Donegal for a few years recently when fish up to  1,000 Lbs were caught trolling between September and November during migrating from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. Unfortunately this sports fishery has now collapsed due to overfishing and "Ranching" of BFT in the Mediterranen.

Sorry to have gone off topic,back to reels!
The majority of multipliers used on the boats here are Penn's (3/0,4/0 and 5/0 with 9/0's for Blue Shark /Giant Skate fishing) due to their durability, reliability and availibility of spare parts. My personal favourite is the Penn 3/0 Special Senator one of which I have had for 50years and still going strong. It's even braid friendly ,with care. Now that it is uprated to 5:1 it has almost the same line recovery rate as  my Trinidad TN16.  It has no ball bearings to worry me and no aluminium parts to corrode in salt water which is more than can be said of the new Chinese 112H2 incorporating two ball bearings and way,way overpriced for a reel made in China.

Good fishing,
                Irish Jigger.

[Irish Jigger]

irish welcome glad to know alan helped you out as he has alot of knowledge of reels. i myself an still trying to catch up   

Thank's for the welcome realmedic. Yes, all the info is here, I should be able to tackle any reel now.

[realmedic]

yeah after learning from alan it does make you feel like super man doesn't it?